This new five-year project will establish a nationwide community of faculty implementing
Next Gen PET. The Next Gen PET set of curriculum materials, recently developed with
support from NSF, the Chevron Foundation and the Bechtel Foundation, consists of a
set of modules that align with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and is
intended mainly for an audience of prospective elementary teachers. The community
of faculty will consist of a leadership team and ten clusters, each of which will
include a lead faculty member and four or five other implementers. The whole community
will document implementation strategies, challenges, and lessons learned, and each
cluster will engage in action research on its implementations. Project research focuses
on how the community of practice can lead to effective educational transformation.
Research questions address the development and functioning of the community, its support
for faculty in responding to known challenges associated with course transformation,
the extent to which faculty take up the Next Gen PET materials and core pedagogical
practices, and impacts on other faculty. Project evaluation will assess student outcomes
in content knowledge and science and engineering practices, and these outcomes will
be correlated with implementation formats. Impacts on instructor beliefs about teaching
and learning will also be assessed, as well as their perceived efficacy with the curriculum.

Next Gen PET Classes

Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education
6475 Alvarado Rd. #206
San Diego, CA 92120-5013